Sleep medicine in Taiwan

The sleep medicine is a young medical science in Taiwan. It began from less than 10 sleep beds 20 years ago in four hospitals all over Taiwan. By the organization of sleep team in Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and the initiation of Taiwan Society of Sleep Medicine, sleep medicine becomes a popular medicine in the past decades. The setting of Sleep Society in 2002 is the milestone to promote the sleep medicine, educate the public and professionals, and control of the quality of clinical practice. Epidemiologic study in Taiwan shows many Taiwanese suffer from sleep disorders and hence more sleep institutes are needed. Accreditation has become a mission of the Taiwan Society of Sleep Medicine. Technicians, sleep centers, sleep specialists and sleep phycologists are gradually certified by the society. 215 sleep technicians, 307 sleep physicians, 31 iCBT therapists and 21 sleep centers are certified by the society till 2015. The first sleep related medical courses are initiated in the Department of Respiratory Therapy in Chang Gung University from 2003. For the following years, eight medical courses are set in six Universities now. Given the fact that the Asian accounts for the largest proportion of population in the world, investigation on the OSA in Asian population is essential. In this article, we aimed to demonstrate the outcomes of OSA-related research in Asia. In particular, the progress driven by the studies in Taiwan will be discussed. Data were obtained online from the Science Citation Index Expanded database of the Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science Core Collection. Keywords including “apnea” and “hyponea” were used to search by applying the filters of the title and the publication years between 1991 and 2014. In total, 2623 articles were hit, subject to the criteria for data search. Among the 2623 articles, sleep and breathing related articles (128, 4.95 %) were the most frequently reported. Japan is the country that published the highest amount of OSA-related articles. The Asian institutions that ranked the first two in the number of OSA-related articles were Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Tel Aviv University in Israel. In Taiwan, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and Chang Gung University ranked fourth and fifth. Both institutes reported 63 articles. In Asia, Japan leads in the quantity of publication and the Japanese research institutes performed evenly. China had rapid growth in the number of articles since 2011. Although sleep medicine developed smoothly in the past decades in Taiwan, there were problems that the sleep society and specialists had to encounter. Insurance limits the expansion of sleep labs and the reimbursement is very low for sleep medicine to survive. The affiliations of sleep specialist and the sleep education are also important issue that the sleep specialists in the society have to discuss.The previous achievements do not guarantee future success. We have to face these problems seriously and take action for the following years to maintain the development of sleep medicine in Taiwan.